Toumei na fuku (Transparent clothing)
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Who is the person we now know as Sakuma Ryuichi? Insights of his high school life.
1. Part 1

**Fandom: Gravitation  
Title: Toumei na fuku (Transparent clothing.)  
Rating: PG  
Description: Who is the person we now know as Sakuma Ryuichi? ****Insights of his high school life.**

**Disclaimer: Gravitation isn****'****t mine.**

**Toumei na fuku. (Transparent clothing.)  
By miyamoto yui**

**Part 1 - jibun. (myself.)**

Do I really belong here?

I go to this private school where all the uniforms are the same. All the seats are the same black color and they have the same square shape. Even all the hair styles seem the same, except for the occasional girl with different things put into her hair.

I can't stand it. I can't take any more of this popular stupidity like idols that can't sing or protesting that kills people when they're saying moral things. That's why I transform back into myself as soon as school is done. Once I'm finished and out of the campus, I run as far as I can.

I change my clothes and I can breathe again.

I hate the conformity.  
I feel like a gay guy that lives two different lives. Here, I'm just "passing". I don't want to be here, but I have to get through because I'm told to. This is just the pattern of life that everyone's comfortable with, I guess.

School is all right and I do well in it, but there's something more I need to know. If this is supposed to simulate "real life" outside, then what am I supposed to do? This isn't life to me. And it isn't because I'm bored.

I don't feel like "myself" here. I've not found that person that's trying to pierce himself through the mirror. Every morning, when I look in the mirror, I see my past, my present, and my future.

But who is it that I'm looking at?

I can stay here for always in this "system". I can do well, go to a good university, and get a good job.  
But who is to say what is "good"? That's what they teach me as I sit here in my desk.

But I want to throw it all up. I always have.

In some way, I rebel with my own methods. I play by "their rules", but I live and act on "mine". I have to know what exists and then I have to defy it. It's the only way I know how to breathe. It's the only way I want to live.

Someday, I'll leave here. And when I come back, I'll look different, but my heart will be the same. It will only get stronger and firmer as the years grow on in number. More vulnerable too. It's a risk I must take though.

How will I ever learn to fly if I don't know how to fall?

"Sakuma-kun, is there something so interesting that you cannot grace us with your attention?" my English sensei, Yoshimura-sensei, says to me with a tinge of sarcasm that doesn't go unnoticed by my ears or the rest of my classmates. They laugh and snicker at my supposed folly.

I turn my head gracefully from the window and put my hand down on my desk. I fold my two hands one over the other.  
He says I should recite the sentences in front of me while my book isn't even open. He hasn't told me the page either.  
I smile and I answer in perfect English, "Where are you going? What will you do? That is a question that only I can answer."

I hit it on the target and insulted him. Little by little, I will win the battles that are thrown out to me. But I know the war is ultimately inside of myself. I just don't know how or what to deal with it yet, so I have to equip myself.

He clears his throat and glances at me with slight scorn. Then, he moves onto the next victim.

I smile widely and want to stick out my tongue at him, but I'm too good for that. Instead, I silently lean my chin on my palm again and stare outside of the window.  
And I know what that translates to too, Yoshimura-sensei.

I can't wait for the bell to ring. Except, it's not like I'm free once it does. I just move from one building to another. School to home. Home to school.

The cycle never stops and I am tired of it all.

I promised myself, though. I'll become somebody.

I'll become the person I want to be, and not the way I'm prescribed to be. And certainly not the way anyone wants to mold me.

Yes, someday, I will be free,

whomever that person is

residing deep inside of me.

**Tsuzuku****… / To be continued…**

**Tuesday, October 5, 2004**


	2. Part 2

**Fandom: Gravitation  
Title: Toumei na fuku (Transparent clothing.)  
Pairing: Tohma + Ryuichi  
Rating: PG  
Description: Who is the person we now know as Sakuma Ryuichi? Insights of his high school life.**

**Disclaimer: Murakami Maki-sama owns this title. Shinya (and poetry) is mine. He is a character I made for ****"****Aching Desire****"****.**

Kiss me,  
Kiss me in this dark night,  
Rape my body  
As you bathe me in your light.

The stained colored kiss  
Does no justice to your beauty  
I catch the waves in my hands  
And wait for a sign  
Of life beyond this unexplored island.

I keep on looking out.  
You drain me as you come,  
Taking me away  
Piece by piece.

I disappear  
because I don't want to be here.

Not anymore.

**toumei na fuku. (Transparent clothing.)  
By miyamoto yui**

**Part 2 - without a voice.**

Even though I'm very independent, even though I do what I damn well please, even though I don't listen to other people, there's something invisible that I struggle against. I don't want to be the center of attention. I have had bad experiences that way. I can still hear their voices chanting and mocking me at the same time.

The voices of those people who called me all kinds of names. The voices of people who cheered for me. The voices of those of whom I cannot force myself to forget even though I desperately want to.

This is the blight of my past that will continue to stain my future.

But more than anything, ironically, I want to be noticed. Not because of what I look like because of what I wear or because "I'm cool" for doing what I want; I want someone to hear me. To not pay attention to me, but to truly listen to me. Beneath the surface of serious glances and cheerful grins. Beneath all the madness and all the reasonable thoughts that are randomly said aloud.

I want to be heard. With all of my broken heart, to put it in black and white and simplifying beyond anything complex, I want to be loved because I've been heard.

As I stand here in some distant corner of the campus, I know my mind is light years away from the people who are avidly playing soccer on the field. And more than this, as I steal glances while trying not to be caught, my eyes can't seem to turn away from the blond boy who is always walking from one building to another with one or two people next to him. He's always talking to people and there isn't a time when I see him by himself, so my mind is made up of parts of him rather than as a whole picture. I guess, he is important.

To them. To me.

I continue to admire the fact that he has the charisma to bewitch people. Even though people come up to me, they are equally disgusted or accepting and impressed by my outrageous behavior. There is always a mixed reaction and I don't know what it is that I have.

But I know he has something that I want. As to what, I have yet to figure it out…

He doesn't know me though. I can't ever get close to him and even if I wanted a picture, I passively go by a newspaper or whatever publication without the courage to take it for myself. Maybe I'm too proud that way. I don't want to grasp onto him in any way because it seems beneath me, even if I'm desperately doing so invisibly with one hand not knowing what the other is doing.

I admire him, though. I truly do. The grass is greener on the other side and all that crap…

But whatever the case, when I get as close as I can to him, we just pass by each other without anything in between. No words, no introduction. Nothing.

It is all empty.

And my hope to know him is nothing but a bubble of a dream. It has an elusive shape that may be just a trick of the light and the timing of the circumstances. It's like that rainbow you see when the water and light are just right.

I turn away from him as I face towards the gates of the school. I turn away from the students and buildings of this establishment that keep me locked in both mentally and physically. But what would I do when I got out, I wonder.

I begin to recite a random poem I've made:

"The unreachable world  
Implores things yet unseen.  
I find myself distant,  
unmoved when I should be.

Have I become numb,  
or have I become more unemotional  
as you like me to be?"

I want to make a melody for this, but nothing will come to me. I just recite this poem to get the feel of it all out of my system. I don't believe I'm saying it the way I want it to be said. I'm such a perfectionist that way.

What would Shinya do? What would my idol do in this situation?

So, I close my eyes and say this with my lips moving but with nothing coming out. When I open my eyes, I'm still lip-syncing.

My eyes find themselves fixated. Even though my head knows it should just ignore what's in front of me because I'm reading more than what should be there, I continue to push logic aside.

The popular blond boy is on the other side of campus standing in the hallway connecting both buildings of our high school. For the first time ever, he is looking directly at me. And into my eyes. It is with such attentiveness and straightforwardness that I want to look away in shame, embarrassment, and shyness.

Even though he cannot hear my words as I want him to hear them, this song that is being created for him, he's waiting to listen.

And it isn't with his ears…  
Am I missing something here?

In the end, I am a coward. I close my mouth and the words evaporate as if I've swallowed all my emotions all over again. I quickly look away and leave my place on the green field.

I'm not ready to deal with anything. I'm selfish that way.

I'm too scared of getting what I want most in the world right now. I wonder why I'm so dumb and weird this way…

Why do I make things so hard for myself? Why do I like complicating my life?

But in that moment that I'm turning away, he had already moved his head to face forward. I only caught a glimpse of his handsome profile. There is no reaction on his face. I have not moved him in any way, as I always thought.  
I realized also in that second that I am nothing, just a mere amusement to him; if anything, by being noticed.

I sadly sing softly to myself, lost in my own world. It is the only way I know I am alive. Lyrics are the only way I talk and communicate to anything around me.

Music makes me vulnerable. It also empowers me.

It is my only sanctuary, my version of internal vocabulary. But I wonder how long it can save me before the foundation of this "church" that I patron comes tumbling down and crumbles before my hands?

As the wind blows a swift breeze before I enter the building to go to class, I feel like I'm standing naked before the ocean. I can scream all I want. Out of pain or laughter, I can't tell the difference.

But the waves can't do anything. They cannot help me.

Even though its sweet melody goes through my ears and penetrates my body to make it ice cold, I can't drown out the sound of its enormous and heavy power. I'm caught between wanting to conquer it because I want my voice to be that strong someday. And even if I did, would it make any difference?

I walk into the school and sigh as I run my fingers through my hair as if I'm calm and composed when I'm actually scared and lost inside. I smile for all to see. I continue to sing a song that no one comprehends, like the lonely sea.  
And that sure as hell is fine by me.

I don't completely understand either. It could be another language for all I care. After all, I know it's unintelligible.

It's my heart talking,  
not my mind.

**Owari. / The End.**

**-**  
**Author's note:** For this particular part, I tried to present a vulnerable, yet strong suit within Ryuichi. Even though it is obvious that he loves music and I've pointed out several perspectives on this take on music throughout my years of writing for Gravitation, I wanted to get even more personal with Ryuichi.  
Because of my own struggle with some issues, they've come out in this fanfic and I hope that I've been able to convey my love for him as well as the elements that make up this character and Gravitation in general.  
I have nothing but love for this title and I always feel so helpless whenever I write for Ryuichi because I feel like he's my anime/manga counterpart (along with an infusion of Sumeragi Subaru), and especially Shuichi when he says, "My dream is too big for me."

**October 8, 2004**


End file.
